Manhattan gave its district legal professional a glowing job approval score this week, with three-quarters of voters selecting to maintain Alvin Bragg on as DA for an additional 4 years.
Bragg, a Democrat, cruised to reelection Tuesday evening with virtually 360,000 votes, or 74% of the citizens, simply defeating his Republican contender, Maud Maron, and impartial candidate Diana Florence and proving to be 20% extra common with Manhattan voters than Mayor-elect Mamdani.
His resounding victory got here after a historic first time period that not often noticed him step out of the nationwide highlight, securing Donald Trump’s conviction on 34 felonies and people of the president’s namesake actual property firm and its prime finance govt, indicting Mayor Adams’ right-hand Ingrid Lewis Martin, and attempting a number of different high-profile instances earlier than Manhattan juries.
“In certain parts of the island where shootings have historically been high, I get a lot of feedback about the work we’ve done,” the DA mentioned. “The breadth of the office’s work mirrors the breadth of the vibrancy of Manhattan.”
Manhattan District Lawyer Alvin Bragg speaks throughout a press convention associated the indictment of Tabitha Bundrick for 36, for allegedly utilizing fentanyl-laced medicine to rob 4 males, killing three of them Wednesday, Sept. 24, 2025 in Manhattan, New York, New York. (Barry Williams / New York Each day Information)
A son of Harlem who studied regulation at Harvard, Bragg, 52, grew to become Manhattan’s first Black DA in 2022 after serving because the state’s chief deputy legal professional basic and a federal prosecutor for the Southern District of New York.
His stormy first 12 months noticed the town’s cop unions label him as “soft on crime” and wage warfare on a few of the extra lenient prosecutorial insurance policies he outlined in his notorious “day one memo” to employees, a few of which he rapidly walked again.
Of their unsuccessful bids in opposition to Bragg, Maron and Florence pointed to a decline in conviction charges as proof that the DA was being overly lenient with the accused.
The DA mentioned his physique of labor doesn’t bear out fears that he would let petty crime go unpunished. He additionally rejected the notion that he’d been shy to implement a few of his progressive coverage concepts, like looking for options to jail wherever potential and by no means pursuing sentences of life with out parole, when requested whether or not he’d reintroduce them after comfortably profitable reelection.
Bragg’s workplace has invested thousands and thousands of {dollars} seized from banks in a set of outreach applications nonetheless of their early phases, with the cash aiming to attach assets to people who find themselves homeless and other people going through low-level expenses for crimes of poverty. His Pathways division has assigned prosecutors to every of the workplace’s Trial bureaus to proactively establish individuals who would profit from options to jail or jail.
The DA doesn’t consider his initiatives have solved the crises of homelessness and psychological sickness and the way the justice system responds to them. He pointed to a invoice he’s co-sponsored with state Sen. Brad Hoylman-Sigal that might join folks charged with low-level offenses whose instances are dismissed with psychiatric therapy and short-term and long-term housing.
“This is something that has been and will continue to be a significant priority, and I would think about it on a continuum,” Bragg mentioned.
Manhattan District Lawyer Alvin Bragg addresses the Media) Manhattan District Lawyer Alvin Bragg is pictured in Manhattan on Thursday, Nov. 14, 2024. (Theodore Parisienne for New York Each day Information)
“We did 6,400 shoplifting prosecutions last year, so we will continue to bring those cases, but also bring to bear the mental health interventions for those kinds of cases in particular.”
Bragg mentioned he considers one other of his largest challenges to be guaranteeing justice for the town’s renters and staff, points Mamdani made central to his traditionally profitable marketing campaign for Metropolis Corridor. The DA pointed to the workplace’s enhance in prosecutions in opposition to dangerous landlords, corrupt builders, and wage-stealing managers following the launch of its housing and employee safety items.
“The biggest challenge is focusing on the disorder that we see,” the DA mentioned. “If you’ll allow me to have a compound answer, I also do think our kind of, you might call it an ‘economic justice practice area’ … Obviously, there’s been a lot of discussion about affordability and costs, and I think on our docket, we see it manifesting in a number of ways.”
Bragg mentioned he wasn’t involved about his standing with the commander-in-chief, who has made no secret of his disdain for the DA for positioning him as the one president to be convicted of a criminal offense or to make use of the federal authorities’s enforcement powers in opposition to his perceived political enemies, just like the not too long ago indicted state AG Tish James.
“I just got the privilege of another four years,” the DA mentioned.
“Seventy-four percent of the voters in Manhattan, and they elected me to focus on continuing to drive shootings down from 66% and homicides from 48%. That’s what I’ve been focused on for four years, the work is what I’ve been focused on for a quarter century now, and that’s where I’m gonna continue to focus.”
